Hoosier Logger

My Dad inherited ten acres of heavily wooded ground on the southwest outskirts of Crawfordsville, Indiana from his Dad in 1949. Granddad had bought the rustic acreage as his own private hunting ground and built a two-bedroom cabin. It was a three hour drive from our home in Indianapolis before the freeway was built. We went hunting, fishing and played there over the years as I grew up.

The east side was bordered by a creek that was twenty feet wide and two to five feet deep in places depending on the time of year and rainfall. There were nettles mixed in with the big walnut and cottonwood trees along the creek’s sandy beaches. The old cabin had a 1920’s ambiance; it had a wood-burning stove, great springy beds, an old wooden table and four chairs. It had a kitchen great-room where we played cards and told ghost stories. From the cabin you had to walk a 100 yards along a ridge overlooking the creek, which was about another 75 yards down below, to get to the outhouse.

My Dad and I used to sit along this ridge at dawn when I was a boy to hunt squirrels. My Dad had an automatic shotgun and I had a .22 single shot rifle. I never killed anything but empty beer cans. My Dad however could easily bag a squirrel with ten rounds from his automatic. He usually got two or three squirrels. We’d take them home where my Dad would clean them and my Mother would fry them for dinner. They didn’t taste bad; but you had to be careful you didn’t break a tooth on the buckshot.

When I was a teenager the cabin burned down mysteriously. They said it must have been some depraved kids from Crawfordsville. This was a sad loss for me as I loved the old cabin; strangely the outhouse had not been touched. Thirty years later one of my Dad’s best friends, Walter, a fishing buddy and fellow fireman traveled 2,500 miles to tell me that my Dad had set the place on fire himself. Walter had kept this secret long enough and was able to sooth his conscience. What’s ironic is that my Dad was a professional fireman and could have lost his job over this.

After the cabin burned down my Dad entered his tree cutting phase. I don’t know where he came up with this but he bought a chain saw and decided he’d become a weekend Hoosier logger. This was a dangerous occupation because my Dad considered it absolutely essential to drink beer while cutting down trees. I was in charge of stacking and holding while he cut; I always got the boring jobs and I didn’t even like beer. What I couldn’t figure out was when half of the big tree in our backyard at home fell down after a horrendous windstorm, my Dad could care less. He gave me an axe and told me to chop it up. It took me three weeks, what happened to the chainsaw?